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Agendas

10/31/2020

Agendas

Well, after a grueling and seemingly interminable election cycle, next week we can all take a few days off before starting in on the 2024 campaign.

In the meantime, it would be good to consider how to handle the next four years. While most of you (dear readers) hope and expect the Dems to come out ahead, we were all stunned with the upset of Hillary in 2016; so let’s not blithely assume all will go well.

Of course, it may not be exactly next week that we know what we’ve got; election contests have been known to go into December (2000) or January (1800); but soon enough, in any case; and, hopefully, peacefully.

If Biden wins, but (thanks to Cal Cunningham’s libido or other factors), Mitch is still running the Senate, then we can look forward to four years of hardly any substantive legislation. At least much of the bleeding, in terms of foreign policy and administrative actions, can be stanched. But, that’s about it substantively. Trump’s greatest shortcoming has been the lack of moral leadership and that is something that Biden will change.

If Trump wins, all bets are off. Some folks will move to Canada/Costa Rica, but most of us will have little choice but (relatively comfortable) unhappiness and anxiety. Suicide rates among certain metropolitan elites will go up. Hands will be wrung and great damage to the country and world will result. Jobs, hope, and lives will be lost. No one will be surprised at assassination attempts and more domestic unrest. Barr, DeVos, and Trump unleashed. Many terrible thoughts run through my mind, but the question is: After hands are all wrung out, what is to be done?

   1. Hunker down.
   2. Create a bubble of tolerable friends and family
   3. Take care of those who are most at risk.
   4. Resolve to come out the other side in 2024, just as we have come out into
       2020 (not pretty, but ….)
   5. Find hope and gratitude (Jesus and Buddha are both available).

If the Dems take over (and there are no crises/disasters in the interregnum), don’t expect miracles. The Senate filibuster will have to be dismantled (this is a risk since the pendulum WILL swing), but getting a majority for action will not be simple. Moral leadership in the pandemic will be welcome, but huge challenges—scientific, logistical, and economic— lie in the way of moving to the ‘new normal.’ After all, the Dems are not in great/coherent shape themselves, they only seem that way by comparison.

Beyond the policy front, it is important to remember that in terms of the composition and views of “America” much has not changed. Trump’s incompetence and venality have been exposed for a while. If COVID had not shown up nine months ago, with all its personal and economic carnage, it’s quite likely we would have four more years. Similarly, if Trump had shown a modicum of political nous and really focused on re-election rather than ranting, he would have had quite a good shot. As it is, the degree to which you are worried that he might still be re-elected indicates how little is different. Was Obama a fluke? Was Trump? We have no idea how my historian successors will characterize early 21C America. Even if some Trumpians fade into the woodwork, we have to recognize the fact (not fake news here) that a lot of the country preferred his dissimulation and bluster. As a nation we have to try to understand their anger/fears and see if at least some of the root causes can be addressed.

At a policy level, it would be great if Joe and Nancy and Chuck et al. came together and knocked out a high-level legislative agenda in the first 100 days. Besides repairs, there is much to be done and much is mapped out: environment, health care, taxes, voting rights, infrastructure, economic stimulus and jobs. The gating factor is not substance: solid policy choices have been mapped out; it is (as ever) political will. Speed and momentum are more important than details in changing the national energy and attitudes. Lay down some markers, fill in the gaps and details later in the year and into 2022. Surprise everyone with a touch of compromise in order to get things done; quickly, if imperfectly. It is likely too much to expect the more aggressive wing of the party to rejoice with incremental (if meaningful) progress on all these fronts; but we can at least hope that they don’t get too righteous. This election is a referendum on Trump, not a mandate for drastic change.

At a personal level, what is to be done? My list above still pretty much applies:

   1. Hunker down.
   2. Create a bubble of tolerable friends and family
   3. Take care of those who are most at risk.
   4. Resolve to come out the other side in 2024, just as we have come out into
       2020 (not pretty, but ….)
   5. Find hope and gratitude (Jesus and Buddha are both available).

May the Force be with us….

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The Comforts of History

10/23/2020

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As both a historian and a (recovering) lawyer, I have often wondered whether people make too much of history and precedent.

On the legal side, I suppose, the ritual invocation of precedent (a key component of our English-originated common law system) is designed to assure that judges move the law only incrementally so that social change will be kept within tolerable bounds (for both political and psychological reasons).

Sportscasters, on the other hand, reciting statistics such as “Crawdad State has won seven of the last eleven meetings with the University of Clamato” are just using the past as filler. It’s not like the performance of any player from ten years ago or more has any effect on today’s contest. These commentators (from many branches of journalism) conflate a label with a thing. The Crawdad Pincers may still wear all red uniforms, but there is no thing there; just a tradition, a label, a memory—each a social construct.

Still, such constructs can be powerful; as alumni who receive pleas for donations can attest. Traditions do make us feel warm-and-cozy. They reinforce a sense of belonging and identity. They are hardly confined to athletics. We Americans used to say (until the 1970s) that we had “never lost a war.” Pride in victory, pride in continuity, pride in ‘us-ness.’ Alas, past results are no guarantee of future performance.

Historians have studied how we construct traditions; which may or may not have anything to do with the past. Leaders of national states or those that aspire to have done so to great effect over the past 150 or so years. Scottish tartans and Bastille Day were both invented in the late 19C. Confederate war memorials were not constructed until the 20C.

Why is it that we so value the (apparent) venerability of what we do and what we believe? I suspect it has something to do with the values expressed with regard to the common law: continuity and community. More, we seem to be hungry for self-validation by reference to the past. Finally, its usually easier to avoid being blamed if I can cite hoary precedent.

All of these are incentives to construct (at both the personal and societal levels) a useful past and put at risk our ability to construct an accurate one. If, as William Cronan has said, “history is the stories we choose to tell about the past;” then we need to be circumspect about accuracy (not so much falsification as artful selection). A reading of history rooted in continuity, community, self-validation, and security is conducive to comfort.

Perhaps our veneration of the past is a left-over from when tribal elders were consulted before group action. Chains of memory were the only way to access wider experience. In the era of modern historical practice (the last 200+ years), this may no longer make sense. We have, perhaps, too much history; too rich a vein of human experience is accessible to mine, and so we have examples, and counter-examples, and counter-counter…etc. This is one of the great and fun things about delving into history, but it doesn’t make it easier to extract lessons for the present.

Nor if such histories are then used as the basis for future action. The ability to cite precedent for one’s actions is likely to be solipsistic and therefore problematic. There are likely many examples of this in terms of personal behavior, but I will touch on two at a more macro level: boundaries and race.

Countries rise and fall, but like the Crawdad Pincers they are not things. Does the fact that England once ruled India mean that if it were to regain global hegemony, it should claim: “this used to be British territory, so we have a right to it now”? That seems to be the offered rationale of much of China’s bullying the other countries bordering the South China Sea, war between Iran and Iraq, or Bolivia, Chile, and Peru, or Russia and Ukraine. A simpler response to the China’s (et al.) claim is: “so what?” Why does past status (especially centuries-old) create entitlement to the future? At what point does it not matter anymore? In Anglo-American law, we have concepts such as adverse possession (which times-out old claims to land) and statutes of limitation (which puts all manner of old wrongs to bed on the ground that we have all moved on and it would be too much trouble to figure out the exact events of the past, much less their relative equities and those of all who came since).

Indeed, to apply a variant of the Chinese claim, everything in the world should belong to Kenya (or Tanzania or wherever the first humans lived), since they (or their descendants) were “there first.”

Another variant of the problem arises with claims to racial and ethnic identity. We are all Africans. For some of us, our ancestors left earlier or later and stayed (for some generations) in South Asia, East Asia, Beringia, North America, before making their way to South America (similarly for other migration patterns). Why is it that the three hundred (or thousand) years of lineage in Poland or Ghana or Vietnam should be definitive?

Much of the answer has to do with the traditions and cultural/community identification noted earlier. But these are modern choices—constructs made (in many cases) in the last two hundred years—and all this is to leave out the issues of genetic mixing which will (when fully understood) make a hash of everyone’s claims of cultural purity/identity. Its great to celebrate cultural traditions (Ok, maybe a little less schmaltz in the gravy and don’t get me started on Riverdance), as long as we don’t take them too seriously.

This is not to say we shouldn’t do old history, but merely that we need to be mindful of its uses, abuses, and the limits of what it can tell us.

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Viruses, Damn Viruses, and Statistics

10/17/2020

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The pandemic has revealed real problems with many institutions—American and globally. Public discourse, hobbled by delusional leadership and lame/mainstream media enamored of simplistic rationales, has struggled with figuring out where we are. It’s likely to take several years to get the story straight. Meanwhile, misapprehensions of the nature of science, historical perspective, and statistical analyses have undercut public understanding and sensible public policy.

Let’s start with science.

There is no such thing. By which I mean that there is no “thing”, no organization, no clear voice, and no offer of definitive answers. There are thousands of smart people around the world, most of whom in relevant fields have been busting their collective butts to figure out the nature of the beast that besets us and how to deal with it. However, it is not in the nature of science to “know” much of anything. There are working hypotheses with varying degrees of evidence behind them. Even questions which have been studied for centuries sometimes get turned on their heads in light of new information and ideas. Just ask Newton and Aristotle.

To expect, in the middle of the largest real-time experiment in global history, with the immense pressure of daily death counts and crashing economics, that initial guesses (masks, isolation, gloves, ventilators, risks by age cohort) would be even mostly correct reflects more our collective desperation than an appreciation of what scientists have to offer (most of whom have been careful to speak precisely about the meaning of their ideas). Trumpian critiques (if that is not too exalted a characterization) also reflect more of their speakers’ inability to cope with a complex, dynamic, and uncertain environment than a concern with the effects of early ideas that turned out to be incorrect, incomplete, or in need of revision.

Since Francis Bacon wrote, four hundred years ago, the nature of science has been to accept (revel in) this uncertainty and revise ideas in light of experiment and experience. Indeed, attacks on “science” are rooted in a coded resentment of scientists’ epistemological flexibility and ability to tolerate the limits of what we (as a species) know of our world.

Second is history. Global political, environmental, and medical crises have combined to make it feel like the end of the world is at hand. And, while I am moderately concerned about the first, and quite pessimistic about the second, the coronavirus is not the pandemic that will end humanity: not even close. This is NOT to downplay in any way the loss of millions of people around the world; their suffering and that of their families, the economic hardships that will continue to bear down on billions of the global poor, or the exhaustion of thousands of devoted care-givers.

There are many ways in which history can give us a little dose of perspective on our current situation (even with due allowance for past and current statistical deficiencies). The “Spanish” Flu of a century ago has been commonly cited as a precedent for our situation. However, that pandemic killed about 3% of the global population (the equivalent of 200-250 million people today). The Coronavirus toll looks to be in the neighborhood of 1% of that (i.e. .03% of global population), although the impact in South Asia and Africa is still at very early levels. The smallpox which Europeans brought to the Americas in the 15C/16C killed about 90% of natives over a century. Even the famous “Black Death” of the 14C wiped out about 30% of Europeans. So, even if a vaccination shows up in reasonably soon and global inoculation is completed in four years, we are facing a serious, but not species-threatening, situation.

Similarly, from an economic point of view, global GDP looks like it will take a hit of less than 10%. This would push us back to the levels of 4-5 years ago. If the effects were confined to not being able to see the live-action version of Mulan in theaters or missing the 2020 Pantone color of the year in clothing and houseware stores; these would seem like “acceptable losses.” (btw, it’s “Classic Blue”). The impact on hundreds of millions individual workers and their families (as compared with consumers and corporations) is devastating; but the impediments to relief are entirely political at both the national and global levels. The problem, as Shakespeare said, “lies not in our stars, but in ourselves.” The pandemic has presented us with a challenge and we haven’t stepped up.

Finally, statistics. Much could be said here about the numbers thrown at us daily in the media; the marking of mortality milestones: 200,000 Americans dead, 1 million humans dead. Tote boards in the corner of TV news shows. When will California hit 1 million cases? When will India surpass the US as the home of the most infections? Maps with buttons sized to the number of cases or dead in a particular jurisdiction (as if county or state lines mattered).

Little of this is helpful in understanding the actual scope and impact of the pandemic. The virus doesn’t pay attention to borders and population density is crucial to seeing what matters to people on the ground. Local angles are much more insightful than aggregates. Here are a few interesting points that show that the mass media’s reliance on big numbers/raw data is deceptive:
* There are more cases in Guatemala (pop: 15M) than China (1.4B).
* Eight out of ten of the hardest hit U.S. states (cases per capita) are in the South.
* California has 10% fewer cases per capita than the US average, even though it has more cases than any other state (although Texas and Florida are catching up!).

And these are just the reported numbers. When all is said and done, historians of the pandemic will likely see that the death tolls are twice as big as the numbers being reported and that case counts could be off by a factor of 20. So, while I hasten to add that correcting for these problems tempers, but does not undercut my point about historical perspective; it seems likely that the public consciousness of the size of the problem is pretty weak.

If it were merely a matter of getting the record straight, we could let historians sort it out over the next 5-25 years. But the misunderstandings lead to knee-jerk public policy and contribute to the loss of trust in the “system.” More people will get sick and die and more workers will lose jobs as a result.

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A Democratic Crisis

10/9/2020

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(This is the first in an occasional series about making changes to the Constitution)

A Democratic Crisis

No, I’m not talking about Bernie/AOC vs. the ‘moderates;’ thankfully, they have figured out that four more years of Trump would not only prevent any of Bernie’s goals in his lifetime, but make them pretty tough in AOC’s, and have gotten in line.

Nor am I talking about that hardy perennial: the electoral college, although it is connected to my topic today. The EC is a democratic problem, but it is one that is fixable by constitutional amendment or, more likely, by any of several statutory/inter-state agreements ending the “winner-take-all” problem which drives the biggest share of the difference between the EC vote and the popular vote.

Neither is it the upcoming final battle over the minority filibuster in the US Senate to determine whether the will of the “majority” (presumably the President, the House, and the Dem’s slight likely edge in the “upper chamber”) will crash upon the rocks of Mitch McConnell’s long-talking and desperate GOP minority; although this, too, is connected.

Rather, it is the simple fact that the Constitution provides for two senators per state, regardless of size. This is democratic if you’re a state; but not if you’re a person. Supreme Court precedents of “one person, one vote” mean nothing if the Constitution expressly says otherwise. Almost a quarter-millennium ago, when the US was set up, this was grounded in theory, “rough justice,” and political deal-making. The distribution of population among the states has changed pretty dramatically in the meantime, with the result that small states’ voting power in the Senate is larger than it ever has been, and increased urbanization is going to make it worse. If current partisan polarization continues (which also has a big state/little state differential), things will come to a head in about twenty to thirty years.

The equal representation of the states was one key to the legendary deal at the Convention in Philadelphia in 1787; the compromise between those who wanted the US to be represent the “people” (i.e., the white, male, usually property-owning people) and those who saw the US as a federation of independent states of equal dignity, sovereignty, and power who came together to form a “more perfect union.” The result, a House of Representatives allocated every ten years by population was conjoined with a Senate which represented the states (originally elected by state legislatures, not popular vote). An ugly and perhaps necessary compromise among many which enabled the deal to be done and the country to move forward.

However, unlike every other provision of the Constitution, the provision for equal representation can’t be changed; at least not through the ordinary methods of amendment. Article V says that “no State, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.” So, fixing this problem requires unanimous consent.

Not bloody likely. Flying pigs and parkas in Hades are more likely than Wyoming and North Dakota agreeing to give up a second Senator; after all, what can California, Texas, and Florida do about it? But before we get to the likely denouement of this constitutional conundrum, let’s look at the data.

I’ve taken the population data of the states at every census and added the projections for the next twenty years. To illustrate the issue of inter-state inequality, I’ve ranked the states by population and divided them into four groups and compared the top quartile with the bottom quartile. So, for the 16 states in 1800 (when Jefferson was elected) the average state in the top quartile was 6.5 time more populous than that in the bottom quartile. By 1850, the ratio was 9.5, by 1900 it grew to 14.6 and it crept up from there to 16.7 by the last census in 2010 (with a total US population of 309M).

We have had a long-term problem, continuously getting worse. Indeed, by now, the size of the problem has tripled from our nation’s founding. In 2010 a majority of the nation lived in the most populous nine states (i.e. represented by 18 Senators), while the least populous 12 states (with 24 senators) together comprised only 11M. Going forward, in 2030, US total population is projected to be about 358M, of which the top 12 states will have 223M and the bottom 12 will have 13.3M, for a ratio of almost 17:1. Hardly the picture of representative democracy.

Historically, we can look back to the British Parliament which hadn’t undergone ‘redistricting’ for centuries, with the result that by the early 1800s, booming cities such as Birmingham and Manchester, were drastically underrepresented as compared with rural areas. In the US, the provision for redistricting the House every ten years, means that such a mis-match doesn’t arrive. But the Senate, fixed as it is on state boundaries, has got a democratic problem. Vermont, Wyoming, Alaska, and North Dakota have a combined population about equal to that of Brooklyn.

But for the unanimity requirement in Article V, we could see a constitutional amendment that resolved this sensibly, for example, leaving every state with one senator and allocating the other fifty by population, or, to be truly democratic, we could divide the country into fifty districts with about the same population (about 6.5M each at today’s numbers) and they would each elect two senators. Lots to argue about in the details; but conceptually, not too complex.

So, let’s gaze into a political crystal ball and see what’s actually likely to happen. Issues arise around allocation of resources, or partisan differentials between rural/conservative views and cosmopolitan/progressive views lead to an impasse. Tensions mount. Die-hards for the dignity of Delaware or Montana insist on their traditional power. What do the large states with big metropolitan areas and more diverse populations do?

Here’s two ideas: First, there could be noises about secession; but since that didn’t work out so well last time, it would be couched differently, likely as a new constitutional convention to reconceptualize the United States and ensure democratic representation. I will talk some other time about what might come up at such an event, but if representatives of two-thirds of the people propose and ratify a new constitution, it’s hard to see how anyone (even a conservative Supreme Court) will stop that.

Second, the large states could start to split up. Texas’ admission to the Union in 1845 envisioned that it might into five states. California could split into ten states of 4M each (concurrently enacting an ‘inter-state compact’ among them to keep the scale efficiencies of certain functions in a single administration in Sacramento. Ditto for Florida, Pennsylvania and others. With at least a majority of the Senate in line, Congress could just admit San Diego, Pittsburgh, and Houston as new states and there is little Rhode Island or South Dakota could do about it.

Of course, the threat of either such course might do the trick and force a compromise. Small states would be smart to do so (they’d get a better deal), but they won’t until they’re forced to.

Stay tuned, and let me know in 30-40 years how this all turns out.

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Ending American Imperialism

10/4/2020

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The current surge of social justice energy across the country faces a “target-rich environment.” Issues of race, gender, and class are on the table. Coming to terms with our history towards Blacks, Hispanics, and Natives, who live in our “fifty states” will take courage, ingenuity, and humanity. And there are other issues to be addressed.

While there is much to be said about the history of American “imperialism” (even under a narrow definition), the American Empire exists in the 21C. We still have over 4 million subjects. I will not rehearse the moral and political reasons for ending this state of affairs; most are pretty straightforward. The results cannot stand against any measure of justice or democracy. Perhaps we can address this one before it resurfaces at the George Floyd level. Beyond the need to take action for those whom we have wronged, it behooves us to do it for ourselves and a slightly cleaner conscience. Besides, compared to changing cultural attitudes around race or unraveling poverty, making this kind of change is not so difficult.

By imperialism, I mean the extension of power by one group of people over another. This can be formal (the British in India in the 17C-20C) or informal (Russia in Central Europe after WWII, the US in Central America for much of the 19-20C). Most formal imperialism ended in the last century, but not all. Yes, the British still hold a bunch of scattered islands (~250,000 people), but the French took all their overseas territories and let them vote in French national elections, so they’re out of the (formal) empire business. Even the Spanish are down to a seven-square mile chunk of Morocco; just as Morocco asserts control over the Western Sahara. The UN used to run an entire division devoted to “trusteeship” of colonies, but they closed that down in 1994.

Over three million people, mostly on islands, are still under American control (“acquired” principally in connection with the Spanish-American War) in the Caribbean and the Central Pacific. These include: the US Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Samoa, Guam, and the Northern Marianas (you can find the details here). Their formal relationship with the US varies, most are US citizens, but some are not; but no resident has the right to vote for President or a voting member of Congress.

Of course, the most notable American “colony” is the District of Columbia, whose citizens can vote for President and for a non-voting member of the House. The movement for DC statehood has been active for 65 years and finally received approval of the US House this past summer. Final approval depends on the election this November.

That would be a big step. But full citizenship for the 700,000+ subjects of DC would solve less than 20% of the problem. Puerto Rico is more than 4 times larger and the other territories don’t seem to fit anywhere, either logically or politically. Statehood for Puerto Rico has its own complex history, but imagine if Congress were to say: “We’re done with this empire business; you’re either in or out. Make a decision on statehood vs. independence and get back to us.” While many assume that Puerto Rico would be a Democratic stronghold, there is some argument that the GOP (or what’s left of it) would be competitive there.

Treating the three others (Samoa, Guam, and the Virgin Islands) is less clear-cut. The mental hurdle to overcome is that we are the United “States”: a federation (at least nominally) of independent political entities (13 former colonies and all that). We don’t have any way for someone to be fully a part of the United States other than statehood. All of the land and people we added along the way (i.e., imperialism in action) was organized as territories, intending to become states in due course of development and increasing population. Is it any wonder that this traditional model—which worked well enough for Ohio, Nevada, and Alaska—was not extended to territories occupied by Hispanic and Pacific Islanders?

The main problem with statehood for these small groups (50,000-170,000 people) is that giving them each two senators would exacerbate the already highly skewed and anti-democratic composition of the Senate (about which I will write separately).

So, let’s get Hawaii to incorporate Guam and Samoa, and Puerto Rico to incorporate the Virgin Islands. All the state representation and devolution of local authority issues can be adapted from existing laws and arrangements, the changes need not be dramatic. The gains are a set of new full American citizens and the elimination of a legal structure that embeds a quasi-/second-class status which should be abhorrent to a modern democracy.

This would clean up one legacy of the past; but our history is still our history. The issues around descendants of slaves and other Blacks are complex and confusing. The treatment of Native American groups has been as ugly, if different. Neither is susceptible of a straightforward solution.

But at least with regard to the remnants of the US’s formal empire, doing justice unto others is not only for the nominal beneficiaries. Relinquishing an abusive power is its own reward.

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Condemned to Repeat It --
Musings on history, society, and the world.

I don't actually agree with Santayana's famous quote, but this is my contribution to my version of it: "Anyone who hears Santayana's quote is condemned to repeat it."

Agendas

The Comforts of History

Viruses, Damn Viruses, and Statistics

A Democratic Crisis

Ending American Imperialism

Condemned to Repeat It --Musings on history, society, and the world.

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Condemned to Repeat It --
Musings on history, society, and the world.